The Art of the Martini

Exploring the Timeless Rituals Behind the Perfect Pour

Suzy Chase: You write about the little rituals involved in the preparation. So you say the preparation is a lot of magic. Talk a little bit about that.

Alice Lascelles: Yeah, well, I think in this day and age where we're all in such a rush to get everything done and everything's on tap and on Deliveroo or speed dial or whatever, the cocktail really pushes back on that. I mean, you can find books that are about how to make a cocktail in under 30 seconds, but I think that's kind of missing the point about what a cocktail should be. It should be this moment. At the end of the day when you close your laptop and you switch off your phone and you put on a record and you light some candles and you get all your nice tools out and you take this moment to really just be present and enjoy the preparation of the cocktail, the martini call it choosing your ingredients, choosing your glass. That's a big part of it for me. I have lots of different glasses, zesting the lemon smelling, those lovely scent oils, stirring the ice and your nice Japanese mixing glass maybe, and just then sitting down with your martini, hopefully with someone else with a martini as well. And just spending a moment just to sort of be present really. I think that's part of the cocktails magic.

Listen to the Dinner Party episode here.